PP290-4 (3) Special Topics: Information Technology and Public Policy Fall 2011 Tuesday, Thursday | 5:00-6:30PM |Room 105 Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley Instructors: Prof. Michael O’Hare and Jason Christopher, Dir. of IT, GSPP

 Technology pervades our personal and professional lives. Our students need to be IT literate (GSPP Program Review)  Policy problems are increasingly addressed with IT tools (Experiments of Concern Portal)  Adoption of a new technology or information system will have anticipated and unanticipated implications… (Stanford, UCB)  Learning IT skills will develop your IT conceptual literacy. Our philosophy is that in learning real IT skills, you will gain an invaluable IT literacy that will inform your public policy thought and decision making. PREMISES

Technology Pervades: Climbing Mt. Everest this Summer? Don’t Forget your Cell Phone. Pasi Koistinen, chief executive officer of Ncell, Nepal’s first private telecom company speaks on a cell phone at an Everest base camp First 3G (Third Generation) cell phone call from the summit of Mt. Everest on 6 May 2011.

 Technology pervades our personal and professional lives. Our students need to be IT literate (GSPP Program Review)  Policy problems are increasingly addressed with IT tools (Ex. Biosecurity: Experiments of Concern Portal)  Adoption of a new technology or information system may have anticipated and unanticipated implications…(Stanford, UCB)  Learning IT skills will develop your IT conceptual literacy. Our philosophy is that in learning real IT skills, you will gain an invaluable IT literacy that will inform your public policy thought and decision making. PREMISES

IT TOOLS FOR POLICY

 Technology pervades our personal and professional lives. Our students need to be IT literate (GSPP Program Review)  Policy problems are increasingly addressed with IT tools (Experiments of Concern Portal)  Adoption of a new technology or information system will have anticipated and unanticipated implications…(Stanford, UCB)  Learning IT skills will develop your IT conceptual literacy. Our philosophy is that in learning real IT skills, you will gain an invaluable IT literacy that will inform your public policy thought and decision making. PREMISES

Adoption of a new technology at Stanford… “Sometimes I look and wonder if this wave of ERP (enterprise resource planning) software…wasn’t a collective hallucination,” Stanford CIO Chris Handley “By the time Handley was hired to oversee the Oracle and PeopleSoft projects, Stanford had decided to change itself rather than the software. This meant relinquishing forever the convenience of technically superior mainframe software.” “Version upgrade gridlock” caused by interfering software Oracle v Peoplesoft “Version upgrade gridlock” caused by interfering software Oracle v Peoplesoft Techs supporting the software w/o enhancing the code Techs supporting the software w/o enhancing the code

UC Berkeley Calendaring and 4 million offered/day, 1 million served 4 million offered/day, 1 million served Calendar System: CalAgenda, a PeopleSoft product Calendar System: CalAgenda, a PeopleSoft product PeopleSoft bought by Oracle PeopleSoft bought by Oracle But Oracle already has a calendar system But Oracle already has a calendar system No plans to further develop PeopleSoft calendar No plans to further develop PeopleSoft calendar UC looks to open source (OS) development – Rensselear Polytechnical UC looks to open source (OS) development – Rensselear Polytechnical Project flounders for lack of high level staffing Project flounders for lack of high level staffing UC system flounders UC system flounders Lead tech for CalAgenda migration leaves for Twitter Lead tech for CalAgenda migration leaves for Twitter UCB looks to Google and Microsoft for a soltion UCB looks to Google and Microsoft for a soltion Google won’t make guarantees about not hosting e- mail in China….Hello Microsoft? Google won’t make guarantees about not hosting e- mail in China….Hello Microsoft?

 Technology pervades our personal and professional lives. Our students need to be IT literate (GSPP Program Review)  Policy problems are increasingly addressed with IT tools (Experiments of Concern Portal)  Adoption of a new technology or information system may have anticipated and unanticipated implications…(Stanford, UCB)  Learning IT skills will help you develop an IT conceptual literacy. Our philosophy is that in learning real IT skills, you will gain an invaluable IT literacy that will inform your public policy thought and decision making. PREMISES

? What is your experience?

Student Introductions

HOW  Tuesday Sessions (Conceptual)  Primarily discussion based on readings and in-class presentation, see syllabus, find readings and links on bSpace, required and recommended material.  Thursday Sessions (Skills)  “Lab” session, project-oriented, experimental, what can you make the technology do?  Hands-on, demonstrations of applications and technologies, students sign-ups next Tuesday  First demo: google docs (Jason)  First project: HTML-based, create a personal web page… 

TOPICS  Internet Filtering and Tracking  Personal Hardware: Desktops and Laptops  Internet and the Web  Property and Digital Goods  The Ubiquitous World of Data  IT as a Management Tool  Content Management Systems  IT Applications and Tools  Collaborative Tools  HTML, python, Access, Plone and more…  Writing IT Functional Specifications

TOOLS  Clickers  Notes A shared google doc document for each session  Whiteboard A shared google doc “drawing” for each session  What else?

GOALS OF THE CLASS  Learn IT skills, add to your policy toolkit (HTML markup, a bit of python, collaboration tools, apps…)  Learn IT concepts, converse constructively with IT developers to build, rebuild or migrate  Become familiar with the marketplace of IT systems, their pros and cons, features and flaws, especially content management systems (CMS) (Compare and contrast systems)  Learn about Managing IT Resources, write a functional specification for an IT/Policy project  More…

ADMINISTRATIVE  Pre-requisites: None  Always bring your laptop  Grades:  25% Class Participation  25% Quizzes (frequent), interim group or individual projects  25% Mid-term exam  25% Final group project

ADMINISTRATIVE  bSpace for:  Web-based syllabus  Revised detailed scope and Word-based syllabus…  archive  Readings  Announcements  Our course address:

FINAL NOTE “Could you make the blue more blue?”…